A vulnerability has been discovered that affect all Intel, AMD and ARM processors

A This vulnerability that allegedly affects all Intel, AMD and ARM processors will have a major impact on chips going forward. All Operating Systems that operate on these processors (practically everything, including cell phone OS) will require the patch.

The crux of the problem is that the update has been said to slow down chips by as much as 30 percent (ouch!). To add more fuel to the fire experts say the bug is a design floor which is unfixable and a more permanent solution must be physically built into future processors.

So what exactly is this vulnerability?

The bug nicknamed Meltdown (Intel chips) and Spectre (AMD and ARM), was discovered by three Graz University of Technology researchers (in Australia) and allows applications running on the OS to have access to the kernel. Why is this bad? Take it this way; the kernel can do everything on your computer by design!

Having access to this kernel, a hacker can read all passwords, encryption keys, cached files and much more stored in the kernel memory! There go your security and privacy.

When you think about it, the discovery of this vulnerability is quite the disaster because it affects everything from cell phones to shared systems (cloud platforms) like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, which have multiple clients they share resources to.

As mentioned previously the patch can slow down the processors significantly (some experts are even saying as much as 50 percent), however, the slowdown is said to only affect x86 processors. Intel says they will reveal more information about the situation once Microsoft, Apple, and the Linux teams have released their own version of the patch.

ARM spokesman Phil Hughes said that patches have already been shared with their partners, which include many smartphone manufacturers.